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Pat McAfee is living his best life in Dublin, Ireland.
Can only assume he's frequenting the Temple Bar area and the surrounding establishments, hammering pints of Guinness and whatever other adult beverage he can get his hands on.
McAfee unapologetically hosted his live Friday show on ESPN whilst clearly inebriated, and he's doubling down on his determination to rage his face off across the pond.
During the first edition of the year for longtime pregame show
ESPN College GameDay, McAfee even invoked the local Irish lingo to tell the haters to piss off if they had a problem with his professionalism.
https://twitter.com/awfulannouncing/status/1827355443037139386
Gotta love the locals rallying around McAfee. As is probably evident by my surname, I can confirm that the Irish folk enjoy a drink or several. Guinness is a classic session beer, although I'll admit, drinking more than a few in one sitting ain't for me. Whatever. I'm sure McAfee is changing it up by ripping Irish whiskey shots down the hatch on occasion as well.
How cool is it to see a twisted version of the college football tailgating scene make its way to the international scene? McAfee is more than familiar with how that works dating back to his days as a punter at West Virginia. Haven't been to Morgantown myself, but suffice it to say, I've heard plenty of stories that give me a little FOMO for not growing up in the primes of RichRod, Pat White, Steve Slaton, and Tavon Austin among other West Virginia Mountaineer football legends.
I have to agree with my colleague Andrew that McAfee's behavior is pretty damn awesome and refreshing. Do I think every major sports personality could pull off being hammered and hosting a show? Nah, not at all. But to be honest, I can't tell you the last time I watched a sports debate show or anything of that ilk on actual live TV. A feral McAfee is way more entertaining than Stephen A. Smith or Mad Dog Russo screaming into a microphone, with no fewer than half the topics being ones they're barely qualified to analyze.
Seriously, I don't know how many more times I can pull up a YouTube/doom scroll short vid clip and hear Stephen A "break down" football by beginning his soliloquy with something like, "We all know that Dak Prescott completed 69.5% of his passes with 36 touchdowns and only nine interceptions and finished runner-up in the MVP race. We all know that. But in the PLAYOFFS...the Dallas Cowboys are an
accident...waiting...to happen."
That whole paragraph was more for comedic effect and only somewhat based on reality, because it's truly been years since I've known what Stephen A. Smith says on
First Take on a regular basis. I've gotten rather adept at dodging things I don't want to see on the Internet.
Wow did we get off on a tangent there. I didn't set out to throw shade at Stephen A., as
I actually dig the podcast-style show he hosts on his own. His TV shtick growing stale is more a reflection of antiquated, reductive planning by producers than anything else.
Alrighty. Let's land this plane. The Seminoles are 10-point favorites last I saw against Georgia Tech as the teams gear up to kick off the college football season at Dublin's Aviva Stadium. Not sure where exactly Pat McAfee will be watching from, but let's hope he keeps giving us some good, slightly tipsy sports content to ring in what should be something of a national holiday.
I knew I was forgetting something. On the topic of native Irish language, the autobiographical film about the band Kneecap, titled
Kneecap and starring the members of Kneecap, is phenomenal. I went to a blind movie screening a while back and saw it. Highly recommend. It's bonkers. And a massive movie star is in it. Thank me later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFYfp-hKxZQ
